Scholarships in Japan
Today, I will talk about a weird scholarship system in Japan.
日本の奨学金
Japanese scholarships are divided into three major categories, “benefit scholarship,” “interest-free loan type scholarship,” and “interest-bearing loan type scholarship.”
今日は日本のおかしな奨学金制度を紹介します。
Currently, about 60% of Japanese college/university students are using these scholarship systems.
日本の奨学金は、大きく「給付型奨学金」「無利子貸与型奨学金」「有利子貸与型奨学金」の3つの分けられます。
However, the allocation of the benefit scholarship is very small, so almost all students have to borrow scholarship loans.
日本の大学生の約60％が奨学金をもらって（借りて）いるそうですが、給付型奨学金の枠は非常に狭く、ほとんどが貸与型奨学金です。
Furthermore, about 85% of them seem to borrow “interest-bearing loan type scholarships.”
更に、「有利子」で借りている学生は全体の約85％だそうです。
We call all these systems “scholarships(奨学金),” but I think that the loan type scholarships are just “student loans.”
我々は「貸与型奨学金」を「奨学金」と呼んでいますが、このように返済義務があるものは単なる「学生ローン」だと思います。
It can be called “debts.”
別の言い方をすれば、借金です。
It’s not rare that Japanese people who went on to doctoral courses have debts of 10 million yen (90,000 dollars) when they graduate.
博士課程まで進学した人は、卒業時に借金が1000万近くになることも珍しくありません。
In fact, I heard many people are suffering from the repayments of the scholarships.
実際、多くの学生が奨学金の返済に苦しんでいるようです。
I think we should allocate more national budget to education fields.
私は国の予算をもっと教育分野に割り当てるべきだと思います。
